4. Day 13: You Can See Without Judgment

I am not sure yet what my long string of tremendously busy days is actually for but I am pretty sure I was given the answer up front with this month’sextending love to the fear of letting go. This day went from 4:30am -11:30pm, it went from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe [back to Sac then] to San Fransisco Bay and back home again. The day included business meetings, readying the house between visitors, laundry, groceries, traffic, an unbelievably deep and restorative power nap (thank you Jesus!), a brilliant dinner, a hilarious discovery with a good friend, a delightful car ride with the family and our friend from Japan and ultimately huge gratitude for my wonderful bed at the end of the day.

I want to share the passage that gave me a mini practice that kept me going for the day:

“You can see without judgment. Allow yourself to become aware of the space that surrounds the person in front of you. Allow your awareness to expand into that visual spaciousness they are standing in over and over. Allow it to expand out amongst the trees, past the buildings, the clouds and the sky. Cultivate that sense of easy expansion. It will help tremendously. Whatever the limiting situation is. You will be able to see as quite small when compared to the vastness you have become aware of.“—“Journeys With A Brother: Japan to India” by Bartholomew and the Dalai Lama

Cultivate that sense of easy expansion.

Become aware of the space around you.

I allowed myself to focus, not on my tiredness or the many miles or the flow of doing so much but I softened my view and saw the vastness this was all going on in. It was as if I was in a bubble of belovedness floating through my day. I was still aware of tiredness, I was still aware of driving along the freeway at speed, I was still aware of too many doings trying to squeeze in what seemed too few moments. And I was aware of the vastness of love. I was aware of the gentle space that holds all I do, think, see and feel. In that space I found peace, comfort and quiet joy.

Try this the next time (or right now) you feel that magnetic pull of feeling overwhelmed, under appreciated or flat out annoyed. See the gentle space that surrounds all that is in front of you. Notice the person, the room, the building and the sky. The shear noticing will expand your awareness of the peace that is indeed already present.